Archive for September, 2011

I have found the best way to learn what your body does and doesn’t like, what is good for you and what isn’t is to experiment. You read about what foods help you and which ones hinder your health and while all the information is overwhelming, putting it to the test really is one of the best ways to know how your body will react to it. I have been my experiment for many years now and have learned lots of valuable lessons along the way. The fact is this… EVERYONE is different, everyone reacts to foods differently, some are more sensitive than others to foods like dairy and wheat. When you have learned what foods are good for you, what gives you energy, what fuels your body the best, you’re active, healthy, is it because you are following the Canada’s Food Guide?

Well a personal trainer over at Free Form Fitness has come up with a great experiment of his own! This is actually going to put the Canada Food Guide to the test. Free Form Fitness Personal Trainer Eric Briere is going to eat following the Canada Food Guide for the next month. (The fact that he is doing this clearly gives you the answer that NO he doesn’t follow the Canada Food Guide daily)

I’m sure he’s probably pretty excited about this since! What he normally eats likely doesn’t consist of a morning bagel, or a sandwich for lunch to stay lean in fit I know I’d be stoked, at least maybe for a day!

At the same time, I know how I feel when I eat foods (GRAINS) that are a huge part of the Canada food guide.. I also know how much weight I gain, how much stomach problems I have and how little energy I have. So here you have a very fit, athletic guy who is going to follow the food guide for the next month? Will he merely work off all those carbs with his workouts, will he feel better, worse? I love this idea and can’t wait to hear his updates. Check out his blog, where he’ll be posting video updates as well.

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My last blog post I talked about how gluten and sugary carbs cause a long-range of health problems.

BUT did you know that the whole wheat bread you are eating to get more fibre actually raises your blood sugar MORE than say a can of soda?

Why is this important? Well if you are diabetic or trying to lose weight it’s very important. The more sugar you eat, the more fat you store, your body responds by producing insulin and insulin plays a HUGE role in fat storage and the repeated effect of eating sugar can likely cause insulin resistance which leads to diabetes and even more weight gain.

If you are obese you likely have some form of insulin resistance and therefore need to try and keep your blood sugar as stable as possible. How do you do that? Definitely not by eating whole wheat! Stay away from sugar, cut out those sugary carbs. I’m not saying all carbs are bad, if you look at ingredients on the back of a package you see carbs, subtract the fibre which is good carbs( if it has any fibre) and the rest is bad carbs that lead to weight gain.

For those of you who have access to a blood sugar monitor you can test what foods cause a spike in blood sugar and which ones don’t. Test your blood sugar before you eat, eat a few slices of whole wheat toast or whole wheat cereal and an hour later, test again. You can even test again every hour to see how long the sugar high lasts, sometimes you might find it spike even earlier/later depending on what you eat. Either way I can guarantee you it’s high, sometimes VERY high, especially if you are a diabetic.

Some people can eat as many as 150 grams of carbs in a day and still lose weight, others can only eat between 20 and 50 grams of carbs to lose weight. Everyone is different and once you get a handle on what has more carbs in it, what has a higher glycemic index (raises your blood sugar quicker/higher) you’ll have better control of your weight and will finally start seeing huge improvements in your health.

For more information on the effects of blood sugar by eating wheat you can refer to Dr. William Davis’ new book WHEAT BELLY, chapter 3 is called wheat deconstructed and goes into more detail how wheat affects your blood sugar and fat storage.

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In my opinion you shouldn’t and I’m not the only one who thinks this. It’s funny that it took me, a person with NO PhD to figure this out ON MY OWN, but our “EXPERTS” still tell us that we should eat these “HEALTHY FOODS”

Come on, seriously! Recently I have been so excited to see more books, more studies and even more evidence proving that the way we have done things for the past 40 years is wrong. I really wish I didn’t have to figure this out on my own, I really wish the doctor told me this 15 years ago rather than saying “you have IBS” eat more fibre.

Let me tell you something, I was 60 lbs over weight! What did I do to try to lose weight? The same thing everyone else did, I changed the way I ate. I started eating more fruits and vegetables but I also followed the dietary guidelines, I cut out the fats, salt and ate more whole wheat. This was supposed to help with IBS… BUT where did that get me, LESS energy, sure I lost weight because I did cut out my daily restaurant meals and pop habit but adding the whole wheat created even more problems. I started getting EVEN WORSE stomach pains, MORE bloating, infections and I was getting sick every other month..

According to our dietary guidelines I’m supposedly healthier because I am eating exactly the way I am supposed to be BUT why do I feel so much worse? I lost 20 lbs, then what happened? No matter how much I tried, no matter how healthy I ate, I couldn’t lose the rest. I exercised like a maniac, I ate healthier than I ever ate before and yes I did lose some weight but it stopped and I felt awful. I would burn out really fast and I just couldn’t keep it up for very long. I needed my carbs… I cut out carbs I lost weight, but if I did it for too long I would burn out, I’d get sick, I would be run down with no energy.

Why is it that this is what the doctors, health experts tell us to do.. are you having the same problem as I did? No energy, burning out, getting sick, getting injuries from overdoing it at the gym. Do you have a list of health problems that are getting worse no matter how much you follow the doctor’s advice? I thought I was making things better, but things were getting worse.

It took me hours of research to discover that food might be playing a part in my ill-health and stalling my weight loss. So, I did what any person looking for answers would do, became my own science experiment. I cut out foods, one at a time and I started feeling better. Now my energy at this point hadn’t returned but I wasn’t getting sick, I was starting to lose some weight again and the pains were slowly getting better. Muscle pain, joint pain, stomach troubles, all getting better. I started adding foods back in oddly enough milk was a bit of a culprit (didn’t figure that) but I could eat cheese, cream was fine, what about bread? It didn’t seem to bother me at first, while I noticed a difference right away with milk I figured I’d notice a difference quickly with bread. I was without it for many months and I started adding it back in (white bread) and at first I didn’t notice much, slight pains in my stomach but then symptoms slowly started returning. When I re-introduced whole wheat into my diet thinking grains weren’t the culprit all my aches, pains, quickly came back. NOW I go without grains for a week and try to have something and I have stomach pains within 30 minutes. My body has quickly adapted to me being without them and is telling me something. The funny thing is, I never thought maybe other grains might be bothering me too.

So there you have it, I went gluten-free but why am I still not losing weight? Why do I still not have energy, is something wrong with me? Back to googling I go and discover LCHF and the wonderful world of Paleo. I bought books, read blogs and guess what? It made sense. Grains and most of all CARBS were still in my diet, I went gluten-free but I was trying all these gluten-free foods like GF muffins and cookies, GF tortilla’s. I was eating rice, still eating potatoes and corn and every morning I was having a big bowl of oatmeal!

The most amazing discovery I made though was the discovery that fats are actually good for you! OMG! That explains it, I was eating High Carb, low-fat, Mod protein before and felt awful, had no energy. When I did the opposite, went LOW CARB, HIGH FAT(healthy fat) and mod protein it was like a light bulb turned on in my body. I woke up, I was alive. I needed less sleep in one night, I’d wake up refreshed, I had lots of energy and I lost weight EATING FAT!

If you don’t think there’s any truth to this, then I ask you to give it a try. You don’t have to read a book, you don’t have to do anything other than eat REAL foods. Skip the processed foods, get rid of anything that is white (potatoes, sugar, starch) Eat Fruits, Vegetables, Nuts, Seeds, MEAT, FISH, even dairy if you can tolerate it but rid your life of low-fat. Don’t be afraid of bacon, get rid of the margarine and switch to BUTTER. If you buy something and the label has ingredients you don’t know, you can’t pronounce, leave it on the shelf. Cook with Olive Oil, Butter or coconut Oil. Discover your spice rack again, have some eggs, WITH the yolk! Enjoy the benefits of eating the foods you were meant to eat and after 30 days come back, say HI and tell me how it went.

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If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you read about the food revolution that is happening in Sweden. There’s a couple people who are leading the LowCarb High Fat(LCHF) revolution over there.. one of those people is Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt aka the dietdoctor.

As you may already know I am a huge fan of Paleo and the LCHF lifestyle and the story of the Swede’s Food Revolution really goes to show you that we can take control of our own health, we CAN make a difference. All it takes is one person to try this way of eating … they find amazing results, change their health and they tell someone else. That’s all it takes… One person at a time.

Please take the time to watch some, if not all of what Dr. Eenfeldt has to say at the Ancestral Health Symposium. I am not a big fan of listening to long talks, especially ones on YouTube, but talks like this are what give people that light bulb moment. This one talk can help change your health and your life.

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So although I don’t always post on a regular basis anymore I still spend time reading and catching up on the news that is surrounding me about Low Carb High Fat and Paleo.

With lots of new books coming out, it’s really hard to catch up and while I would love to read all books on this subject. Alas, I only read so fast! Plus my book shelf is getting full, so until books come out as an e-book I tend not to read them.

I am in the middle of reading Everday Paleo by Sarah Fragoso and Robb Wolff. I love this book because it’s written for families struggling to get onto the Paleo bandwagon. When you start eating this way and realizing how much your health is improving you want to do everything you can to get your friends and family involved, this is a great book for that. It has family friendly recipes, advice and some great workouts, even ones to do with your kids!

Make sure to check out Sarah’s website where you can order the book, check out news and other interesting stuff.

Now over to the Former Fat Guy’s blog.. this post I love, 124 ways sugar can ruin your health. This list is great and it really puts in perspective what all these sugary carbs are doing to your body. Check out the post here!

If you have checked out blogs recently in the Paleo world you’ll have heard of the Ancestral Health Symposium. Slowly different presentations from the symposium have been popping up on YouTube. Here’s one of those talks by Professor Robert Lustig, which I found on the Diet Doctors blog.

Love Youtube, you can find lots of great talks about all things Paleo on there. Here is Donald W Miller JR M.D., he is professor of surgery in the Cardiothoracic Division at the University of Washington – he gives a great talk on why you should enjoy eating Saturated fats. This is for all those of you who think that eating fat will give you a heart attack.

And for those of you who want to read a book.. a new book just came out, it’s called Wheat Belly and it’s by Doctor William Davis – another cardiologist. I haven’t had a chance to read this book yet but it’s getting LOTS of attention and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on it and finding out why. I’m sure I already know but still curious.

So you can do one of two things – buy the book. Or you can go to his blog and get updates on what is happening following the launch of his book. Here’s the link to his blog trackyourplaque.com